The Irish Lady, below Mayon Cliff between Sennen and Land's End (2005)
The Irish Lady.
It was always my understanding that she was so named because,
from a boat, she looked like a lady dressed in a Kerry Dress and Cloak.
There is a spreading story about a wreck of an Irish vessel here of old,
where a lady, the sole survivor clung to the rock until dead and washed away by the sea five days later.
It seems that fishermen saw her ghost thereafter, in high seas, carrying a rose in her mouth.
The fact that the rock does indeed look like a Kerry lady, from the seaward,
rather suggests the stories are rather more fanciful than will allow credance.
But Humphry Davy expressed himself in poetry of Theora of Killarny who perished here.
It seems the story dates back to Charles I,
where may perhaps be found an allegory,
or reason for the escape in such seas, from the massacre of the Irish Protestants.
Raymond Forward
